(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a banking terminal apparatus for processing bills and checks, and more specifically to an apparatus to be used for a series of processings executed for bills and checks at the front counter or back office.
(2) Description of the Related Art
The bills and checks carried to a bank have been processed by the procedures shown in FIG. 1. Namely, the number of an account and the amount of money are input at the front counter of a bank as a branch and these numbers of accounts and amounts of money, input from an input apparatus, are sent to the center connected to a plurality of branches. The data transmitted from respective branches are stored for management of transactions at the center. Moreover, a detailed estimate sheet describing a total input sheet of bills or checks and a total amount of money is also generated. A bank book temporarily entering the data is returned to a customer as a receipt (ST1) and bills, checks and detailed estimate sheet are transferred to a hopper in the back office (ST2) for processing.
In the back office, a total amount of money described in the detailed estimate sheet is first input to an amount checking apparatus for the processing in units of sheets. A teller reads the numerals (checkwriter characters) indicating the amount being impressed on the surface of bills or checks and inputs the amount of money to an amount encoder from the keyboard (ST3).
As a result of the input, the amount encoder enters the amount of money to the magnetic ink character input domain of the bill or check with the magnetic ink. The bills or checks which have been input are transferred to the stacker (ST4).
This processing is continued for all bills or checks placed in the hopper (ST5).
Lateral lines are impressed (ST6) on all bills or checks in the stacker, the amounts of bills and checks are summed (ST7) for obtaining a total amount and it is collated (ST8) with the total amount input to the amount checking apparatus. If these are matched, the front and rear surfaces of bills or checks are photographed (ST9) and are stored under the assumption that there has been no error in the input processing. If these are not matched, the input processing for all bills and checks is retried (ST10) under the assumption that there have been errors in the input processing. This check must be continued until such amounts are matched. Those to be transferred to the bill clearing house among the bills or checks having completed the processing mentioned above are gathered with attachment of a tag describing the total amount and a number of sheets of bills and checks.
Such a series of processing steps, is manually carried out taking a long period of time. Particularly, such processing requires double inputs of the amount of money of bills or checks, resulting in a problem in that an input error may often be generated. If an error is found in the characters described by the magnetic ink on the bills or checks due to input errors in the amount of money, such erroneous input is eliminated after making of a correcting mark and the connected input should be made manually (without using magnetic ink). When such correction is made, the automatic processing which is done by reading magnetic ink characters of bills or checks can no longer be carried out at the bill clearing house.
Moreover, if an input error in the amount of money is found, there will exist a problem in that the total amount becomes inaccurate and all bills or checks must be checked for obtaining an accurate total amount. Therefore, there is a need in the art to develop a processing method for bills or checks which can reduce generation of input errors.
Recently, a method of quick processing of bills or checks reducing manual operation steps has been disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 62-14262 (by M. Yoshikawa). However, the processing disclosed in this Japanese Patent is not based on the concept that the data input by the processing at the front counter in the bank is utilized also for the latter processing (in the back office) and therefore this processing does not provide the effect of reducing input processing errors for bills or checks.